Proche Orient : Israel’s self-inflicted hate

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Haftom Zarhum, a 29-year-old Eritrean, was lynched by Jewish Israelis simply because he looked different. After being shot in the legs, a mob circled him like hyenas over a bleeding prey, throwing a bench over his head and chanting the unofficial Zionist’s anthem of hate : “Death to Arabs, Arabs out !” and “Am Israel Hai”. Disowning culpability and playing the traditional victim, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nashon blamed the incident on the “terrible situation we are in”. At a similar scene a week earlier, a video showed a despondent Palestinian child lying in a pool of blood. A puzzled appearance engulfed the child’s face as he gazed at a Jewish racist who was screaming “Die, you son of a whore, die”.

West Bank

Of the approximately 50 Palestinians who were murdered by the Israeli army, police or Jewish vigilante in the last three weeks, at least 20 were allegedly threatening Israeli life. Resisting occupation by any means is a right guaranteed by international conventions. Hence the instances where desperate Palestinians using basic home-made tools confront occupying Israeli soldiers or armed Jewish settlers. But this certainly wasn’t the case in all 20 deaths.

It was definitely not in the case of the slain Jew that Israeli soldiers suspected of being a Palestinian. Emergency response organisation chairman Yehuda Meshi-Zahav Zaka said : “At first it appeared he was like all others. When I was asked to deal with the body, I realised that he was a Jew, and that he was mistaken for a terrorist [Palestinian]”. That is why Zarhum’s life had no value. The murderers rightly assumed their actions, “like all others”, had no consequences. It was proven more than 20 times in the preceding three weeks when Jewish killers walked free as heroes after committing murder.

Mutaz Zawahreh is laid to rest in Deheisheh refugee camp on 14 October 2015

Israel has two systems of justice. It demolishes homes and revokes the “Israeli” citizenship of Palestinians accused of violence. But Jewish terrorists, arrested for burning alive a Palestinian child last year, are celebrated as heroes and continue to own government subsidised homes in Jewish colonies.

It was discovered that Zarhum –who looked more African than a typical Palestinian– was from Eritrea when someone found his Israeli-issued visa and shouted “he’s Eritrean, he is not a terrorist [Palestinian]”. It was already too late to stop the hyenas’ insatiable thirst for blood.

Palestinians carry the bodies of five teenagers killed by Israeli forces during their funeral procession in Hebron on 31 October 2015 after Israel released the children’s bodies

Life in Israel is either Jewish or goyim. It’s been established that taking a non-Jewish life is inconsequential. Israel newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported in 2013 that Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett boasted, “I have killed lots of Arabs [Palestinians] in my life –and there is no problem with that”. As for immigrants, two years ago Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev called Africans a “cancer in Israel’s body”. She was not alone. Following a wave of anti-African demonstrations in Tel Aviv, a poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute in 2013 found that 52 per cent of Jews agree with Regev that blacks living in Israel are “a cancer”. One third of Israelis in that poll agreed “that unlawful, vigilante violence against non-Jewish African immigrants is fine with them”. A whopping majority of Jewish Israelis –83 per cent– supported anti-African protests.

Screaming at an injured Palestinian child soaked in blood, a racist mob lynching Zarhum, or killing a Jew who was mistaken for a Palestinian are further manifestations of Israel’s culture of hate. Hate crime against the African immigrant by a Jewish mob, or against the Jew who was thought to be a Palestinian, are not exceptions. The only exception is that they were not just numbers to be added to the more than 50 murdered Palestinians.

Jamal KANJ

Mourners carry the body of Amr al-Faqih during his funeral in Qatna village, west of Jerusalem, on 2 November 2015, one day after his body was released by Israel. The youth was shot dead at an Israeli checkpoint on 17 October